Pot of Gold

We returned yesterday from our traditional bit of October insanity -- a three-day weekend getaway to the northwoods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where JoyDad's family has a couple of rustic cabins on a little lake in the back of the beyond. The October trip lets us help take care of closing down the property for the winter, taking the boat and pier out, this time with both JoyDad's brothers and father.

It's about seven hours in the car each way, this three-day weekend of ours, for the privilege of enjoying woodstove heating, cold water from a pump, cold outhouse. Plus this year, we'd been watching the forecast with dismay, as the Weather Channel hour-by-hour showed a greater than forty percent chance of rain for every hour of the dang weekend! I had visions of being cooped up in the cold cabins the entire time with the rain pouring down, trying to entertain two damp-bored-miserable kids.

Shouldn't have worried. Without rain, you don't get this:


And in fact, the rain was on and off, more off than on really. We got to go out in the boat, and Rose & I managed a (success-free) fishing run with the uncles. And while we were out fishing, one of the eagles that nests in the tree on the left of the above photo sailed about overhead, bringing branches to shore up the nest for the winter!

I went for a fine walk in the woods with Rose, and we took another one as a family, without even getting Joy too muddy! Her favorite stim for the weekend was long-stemmed grasses, so she did a lot of dropping to the ground in order to pick the next one. Joy also managed to escape her father's clutches and go walking into the lake at one point, while her sister was playing on the pier.

Lake-walk and all, Joy was a happy camper pretty much the whole time. I think she was relieved at the break from the incessant therapy that she gets subjected to at home. We did a lot of playing on the screen porch during the drippy-er bits of the weekend, and she let me take a whole sequence of photos where she looked right at me and did this:


And this:


I blew bubbles upon bubbles for Joy to pursue and pop, there on the screen porch. Rose got into the action too:


The two sisters enjoyed one another a lot this weekend:


So now it's back to reality, back to a whole lotta laundry, back to the therapy schedule and work and studies (which I ignored totally while up at the lake).

What a priceless getaway, though. Once again. Rain, rainbow, and all.